Free Serve Cool by Lauren Davies Page A

Maz to reduce the draughts to 90p a pint and get the punters in the door. Over the previous two months, the pub had been partially revamped by the brewery to resemble an olde worlde inn. The idea was to target families who would come for a quiet Sunday shandy and a scampi basket meal. The pool table, pinball and fruit machines had been removed and replaced with a no-smoking section, sepia photographs, and low lighting. Maz had tried to tell the powers-that-be that no amount of interior design and classical music could possibly change the make-up of the Scrap Inn. Mr and Mrs White-collar, their two-point-four children and golden retriever would not dream of parking their Audi family saloon within hiking distance of the pub for fear of returning to find out the parts had been auctioned by the local kids, piece by piece, to the scrap metal yard across the street.
    Maz had been offended that her regulars were not considered worthy enough to drink the brewery’s beer, paid for with their hard-earned cash or social. Inevitably her words of wisdom had passed unheeded. The plans for reform had been implemented almost entirely before someone in a high place suddenly woke up to reality and withdrew the budget. The madcap scheme had done nothing more than create a pub with bizarrely conflicting decor and alienate the rough and ready characters who had brought in the profits.
    The official manager, Gordon, a quietly confident businessman from Edinburgh, was rarely to be seen inside the pub. He preferred, he said, to manage at a distance, usually of around 200 miles. He never confessed to being scared of the customers but he nearly had a hernia every time he walked through the door. Rumour had it that the brewery planned to sell if profits stayed low, so Maz’s plan was an attempt to rejuvenate sales and get the pub back to normal. I had started to feel of some use as we had collaborated to find ways of increasing the Scrap Inn’s popularity. Keeping my mind occupied was the best medicine, I had decided, and better for my figure, as troughing obscene quantities of anything fattening was the only other option.
    ‘Where’s the bloody pool table gone man?’ yelled a yellow-puffer-jacketed skinhead from across the bar.
    ‘It got taken away, I’m afraid,’ I replied, smiling as widely as possible in a ‘please don’t punch me’ kind of way.
    ‘What a load of bloody shite,’ came the reply, ‘gis us a pint then woman.’ (Polite as ever.)
    The pub was beginning to fill up as rumours of the 90p pints spread like wildfire through the nearby estates. AuldVinny was also a popular character with the locals, who liked to listen to his ramblings. The tales usually involved his days at sea, his sexual conquests (even at the age of 73), the state of the government or whatever else took his fancy. A lot of people had come, allegedly to help celebrate Vinny’s birthday, but when he failed to show up, they seemed happy to settle for the cheap pints and bowls of scampi fries. Hardly surprising really.
    ‘Having fun, Jen?’ Maz shouted as she clomped past me to serve another of the loud-mouthed puffer-jacket people encamped at the far end of the bar. There seemed to be an unwritten rule of puffer-jacket hierarchy, I had decided, dictating who bought the rounds, who got to sit on a bar stool and who got to talk the loudest. I had so far deduced that tango orange came before neon yellow but both were surpassed by faux-aluminium foil reflective silver.
    ‘Magic,’ I answered sarcastically, frantically shaking my head. ‘This is bloody hard work. Perhaps we shouldn’t try and attract all these people.’
    ‘Aye, I’m sweating like a pig,’ said Maz, flapping her hands under her armpits and pulling dramatically at her top.
    As usual, Maz had opted for the simple-yet-sexy look. Blue men’s Levis that hung off her slim hips and showed off her ridiculously long legs, Nike trainers and a crop top T-shirt with ‘Babe’ scrawled across the